A GIF animation of the comet's movement on August 29, 2011 during 1 hours and 51 minutes, when it moved through the star-rich Milky Way constellation Sagitta. The exposure time of each image was 5 minutes. Two satellites move through the field of view, and the background brightness varies a bit. File size 12.5 MB, so it may take a while to load. The autoguider was trained on a star. North is up, east to the left.
Comet Garradd is a long-period comet currently sporting an ½° long tail which will be visible through the second half of 2011 and the first half of 2012, which is a very long time for a comet. It will remain brighter than 10th magnitude during that time and may even reach magnitude 6 in late February or early March 2012, when it passes closest to earth. It already is an easy target for binoculars. The comet will reach its perihelion in December 2011.
In late August 2011, when this animation was taken, it passed through the star-rich Milky Way constellation of Sagitta, apparently en route to the Coathanger cluster (Collinder 399) where it passed by in early September.
C/2009 P1 Garradd was detected on 13 August 2009 during an automatic sky survey at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia by Gordon J. Garradd, who is also the discoverer of 29 asteroids, four novae in the Great Magellanic Clouds and 15 other comets.
Exposure Data
